Exploitation of deployed telecommunication fiber infrastructures for sensing applications

The optical fiber infrastructure deployed in our cities to support the metropolitan area networks is exploited for sensing applications, where the optical sensing signals co-propagate together with the telecom traffic. Thanks to a coherent interferometric approach, structural monitoring of buildings can be achieved in deployed passive optical networks based on fiber-to-the-home structure. Moreover, the same technology is experimented in urban fibre ring networks to detect and localize mechanical vibrations or dynamic perturbation.